One of the many showstoppers on Sun Kil Moon's Benji was album closer "Ben's My Friend," a song about Mark Kozelek having something of a nervous breakdown while watching longtime pal Ben Gibbard perform for a massive audience on the Postal Service reunion tour. Kozelek and Gibbard have since published a pair of… More »

MOJO is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Led Zeppelin's sixth album with a tribute comp called Physical Graffiti Redrawn that will be included with the April 2015 issue. Among the new covers included on the collection is one from Sun Kil Moon, who took on "Sick Again." Mark Kozelek turns the bluesy closing track… More »

Mark Kozelek has announced that the next Sun Kil Moon album will be called Universal Themes, and will be out June 2nd via Caldo Verde Records. The Benji follow-up was recorded over this year and last in San Francisco and Hoboken, and features percussion from Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth. The album will contai… More »

Last November, Ben Gibbard and Mark Kozelek shared a chain of email exchanges about alienating their fans, living in California, and the gentrification of San Francisco. In the latest installment of The Thread, Ben Gibbard and Kozelek correspond about their lives on the road and the difficulties of touring (Kozelek claims to be "Europed… More »

In a new interview with The Omaha World-Herald, Mark Kozelek says that he's well underway with his Benji followup. "Luckily, I'm working on a new album now and hopefully that could be out by fall," he said. "I respond to what's happening around me. [Sonic Youth drummer] Steve Shelley was telling me the other… More »

Sun Kil Moon played a show last night in London's borough of Hackney, and Mark Kozelek spent a lot of time between songs talking about ... the War On Drugs. Said Uncut's John Mulvey in his review of the show: "[I]f at times the whole business [with the War On Drugs] has seemed like… More »

The feud between the War On Drugs and Sun Kil Moon has been long and weird; it probably hit its lowest point with this bullshit. It's easy to imagine the beef heating up as year-end list season approaches its apex and their (great) respective albums fight it out for top spots. But in a… More »

Mark Kozelek's new song as Sun Kil Moon "The Possum" will be getting a physical release via Cameron Crowe's Vinyl Films and Kozelek's own Caldo Verde label, and the label's website reveals that the release will have a B-side with a very snarky name: "Cry Me A River Williamsburg Sleeve Tattoo Blues." The… More »

Something that's gotten a bit lost in the recent War On Drugs saga: Mark Kozelek can write an absolutely incredible song. There were a whole bunch of them on Benji, the astounding album that Sun Kil Moon released earlier this year. And now there's another one. Kozelek is going to release a new single… More »

This week almost went by with no news about Mark Kozelek. Almost! Last week at this time, Koz was making friends with El-P when Sun Kil Moon was booked opposite Run The Jewels at Fun Fun Fun. At the fest, Kozelek played his infamous, unprovoked diss track "The War On Drugs: Suck My… More »

Run The Jewels and Sun Kil Moon played opposite each other at this weekend's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, which ended up being the perfect situation to play off of the incident that kicked off Mark Kozelek's infamous beef with the War On Drugs. During Run The Jewels' set, El-P recounted a run-i… More »

Mark Kozelek and Ben Gibbard had an email conversation for The Thread where they talked about a bunch of different things, including alienating their fans, San Francisco's gentrification, and Almost Famous. (The two singers have known each other for a while -- "Ben's My Friend" on Benji is about Gibbard.) Gibbard gets thing… More »

IT NEVER ENDS. Yesterday, we reported that Adam Granduciel finally spoke about the whole Sun Kil Moon/War On Drugs debacle, saying, among other things, that he thought Mark Kozelek was a "douche." Today, Koz responds with an MP3: a spoken word track of himself reading Granduciel's quote in full, over a blues lick,… More »

Throughout the entire sordid one-sided beef that was Mark Kozelek's tongue-in-cheek campaign against the War On Drugs -- the one that culminated with "War On Drugs: Suck My Cock" and made our own Koz superfan Michael Nelson very sad -- War On Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel remained silent. Not anymore. Speaking to… More »

The announcement that Mark Kozelek would, in 2014, release an album of Christmas standards came last December, along with some of the songs that would appear on that album. We were given "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "O Come All Ye Faithful" in time to add them to our Christmas 2014 playlists,… More »

Well I for one am pretty happy to see that the collective rage of the internet has shifted to Brunchgate after a solid half-week of The Koztroversy (eh? no?). Obviously I did my part to help fan the flames of the latter, which sort of came into sharp focus for me last… More »

Throughout the Mark Kozelek/War On Drugs saga that has been playing out over the past few weeks, it's been difficult to take a step back and consider the whole situation. (Though to their credit, our commenters have brought up the sexist and homophobic nature of Kozelek's comments numeroustimes.) Today Perfect Pussy'… More »

As promised, Mark Kozelek has posted his song about the War On Drugs on his website tonight. It's called "War On Drugs: Suck My Cock" and was written in response to a mostly one-sided beef that's been playing out over the past few weeks. In an open letter on his website,… More »

Mark Kozelek has never cared about his fans. All right, maybe that's not fair; I can't say how the guy feels. He probably cares but he just expresses it poorly or something. Let's put it this way: Mark Kozelek has always treated his fans like shit. In any case, it's an abusive relationship, and it… More »

Most Viewed

As his band traveled through a lightning storm somewhere in the American Midwest, Ariel "Pink" Rosenberg yelled at me over the telephone. It was April 2005, and I was holed up in the spare bedroom of a rented house in York, PA, repeatedly posing pre-prepared interview questions in order to be heard over the noise… More »

Jay Z bought the Swedish company Aspiro's streaming music service Tidal less than a month ago, but that didn't stop him from rolling out his rebranded product today with lots of fanfare from his famous friends. Rumors before the 5PM livestream suggested that Jay's newfangled Tidal would be launched with exclusive… More »

Jay Z is not playing with his big rollout of the streaming service Tidal. After many big stars tweeted their support last night, those same stars have shown up in a new 30-second spot for the service's big relaunch today. In the ad, we see a collection of luminaries -- Jay, Kanye West,… More »

Jay Z wants you to know that Tidal, the Scandinavian high-fidelity streaming service that he bought earlier this month, is a big deal. So he didn't just get some of music's biggest stars to tweet about the service's big relaunch, which is happening today. He got them all to change their social media… More »

Burger Records held their fourth annual Burgerama festival at the Observatory in Santa Ana this past weekend. The two-day fest featured appearances from bands like Together PANGEA, Fidlar, La Luz, Gang Of Four, Public Access T.V. and many, many more. Ty Segall and Weezer were the headliners, and Rivers Cuomo's dad Frank Cuomo made… More »